With the men’s hockey team advancing to its first Frozen Four in 23 years, hundreds of fans gathered at Lynah Rink yesterday afternoon for a chance to buy tickets for the event, which will take place at the HSBC Arena in Buffalo next week.
Earlier in the week, the athletic department announced that student and general season ticket holders would be able to enter a lottery for the right to buy three-game packages for the entire event.
“We had between 1000 and 1500 responses total. The total responses included more than season ticket holders,” said athletic ticket office manager Gene Nighman. “We have a database of all the students who had a line number, and a list of general season ticket holders who renew every year, so we compared the names on the e-mails to the database.”
Members of the men’s hockey team came up to the announcer’s booth during practice to draw names from two pools of names: one for student ticket holders and one for general ticket holders. A total of 25 names were drawn from each pool, and each person chosen had the opportunity to buy two tickets.
Those who were not in attendance were contacted and will have until 5:00 p.m. on Monday to respond.
“There are so many tickets being sold out early, and they do that for a reason. Five-hundred tickets, they go fast. By the time you get through the players and everybody who’s associated with that, there’s not many tickets,” said men’s hockey head coach Mike Schafer ’86. “But knowing Cornell fans, they’re resourceful. There are lots of ways of getting tickets that will just continue all week.”
The drawing was completely random, meaning there was no advantage for having a high number in September’s ticket line.
“Getting a high line number was the reward for getting to the line early [in September.] For this, I think we did it a fair way, with a drawing only for people that had season tickets,” explained Nighman.
Five alternates were also drawn from each pool at the end, and those people will have the opportunity to buy tickets should the people who were selected in the initial drawing decide not to buy tickets.
Junior Mike Maas was one of the many students attending yesterday.
“I’ve already bought tickets on the eLynah.com message board,” he said. “I’m here today to see if I can get better seats first. I don’t think my chances are very good in the lotto, but I don’t care since I already have five tickets.”
Sophomore Alyssa Keese also secured tickets on eBay, but entered the lottery in hopes of getting better seats.
“I think my chances of winning are very small, I think they should have allotted more tickets for students,” she said. “My friends and I are really excited [for next week], we can’t wait to go.”
For people who did not win the lottery, many avenues of acquiring tickets remain. As of last night, there were over 80 listings on eBay, with prices ranging from $100 to $900. In addition, many people have been able to obtain tickets through the message boards on eLynah.com and USCHO.com.
“I know a lot more fans want to go, and there definitely should be,” junior center Ryan Vesce said. “I think they should keep looking for tickets because I think there’s going to be a few after the first game on Thursday.”
Archived article by Jonathan Auerbach